Windows 7, Snow Leopard, open source and glory for Steve Jobs
Stories of the month - October 2009
October's highlights on silicon.com were all about software - from fresh rumblings in the perennial Mac vs PC debate, to question marks over open source cost-cutting and the countdown to the launch of Windows 7, which began shipping towards the end of the month.
October also saw the ninth annual silicon.com Agenda Setters list of the most influential individuals in tech go live - with Apple CEO Steve Jobs being voted number one.
Twitter CEO and co-founder, Evan Williams and Wikimedia founder and co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, took second and third places respectively. For the full Agenda Setters top 50, follow this link.
Steve Jobs' agenda-setting wasn't the only popular Apple article on silicon.com last month: an article entitled why CIOs are saying no to Macs, which polled the CIO Jury on the Mac vs PC debate also proved a hit with readers. So why are CIOs still shunning Macs? In a word: cost. None of the IT chiefs surveyed said the latest iteration of the Mac OS - Snow Leopard - will push their business to adopt Apple desktops.
silicon.com readers also had their say on the matter - with voices raised both for and against businesses buying Apple hardware. Click here to join the debate by posting your own Reader Comment.
There's no doubt Macs are on the march - albeit not necessarily in the enterprise. Last quarter Apple reported a 17 per cent year-on-year rise in Mac sales - far above the mean for PC sales, as silicon.com's resident Apple columnist Seb Janacek noted in this popular opinion piece. But - with the advent of Windows 7 - Janacek speculates that Apple's days of easy usability wins over Microsoft might be over.
So what about Windows 7? What were silicon.com readers clamouring to read about Microsoft's latest flagship OS? The five things you need to be thinking about now, as identified by analyst house Gartner, for one. BAA's prep for a Windows 7 rollout was another popular Windows 7 read.
Meanwhile some readers were already looking beyond Windows 7 - to (you guessed it) Windows 8, with predictions for flagship features including 3D, voice recognition, gesture recognition and special emphasis on virtualisation.
Also popular last month was silicon.com reporter Nick Heath's interview with Acorn co-founder, Andy Hopper, and a look at the best sectors to work in IT from a pay-packet point of view.
Last but not least, the economic case for open source came under scrutiny with only two of the 12-strong CIO Jury revealing they have adopted open source software as a way of cost-cutting during the recession - with "hidden costs" such as retraining and migration putting the majority of IT chiefs off.